Glossary Term – Event

Glossary Term – Organization

“Muckrakers” were reporters who, exploiting mass circulation journalism, attacked malfeasance in American politics and business. President Theodore Roosevelt gave them the name “muckrakers,” after a character in the book Pilgrim’s Progress, “the Man with the Muckrake,” who was more preoccupied with filth than with heaven. Popular magazines such as McClure’s, Everybody’s, Pearson’s, Cosmopolitan, and Collier’s published articles exposing the evils of American society—political corruption...

Glossary Term – Person

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a writer and muckraker whose 1906 novel The Jungle exposed the horrific and unsanitary practices of the American meatpacking industry. Sinclair, a Socialist reformer, hoped that the book would move the public towards socialism. Though it did not lead to a widespread socialist movement, The Jungle did prompt an investigation into the meatpacking industry and the Meat Inspection Act.